Impossibility : The Limits of Science and the Science of Limits - John D. Barrow

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Impossibility

The Limits of Science and the Science of Limits

By: John D. Barrow

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Paperback | 7 May 1999 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback
304 Pages

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19.9 x 13.1 x 2.0

Paperback

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What can we never do? The end of each century leads to a stocktaking of human achievement and our expectations about the future. This new book by John D. Barrow looks at what limits there might be to human discovery, and what we might find, ultimately, to be unknowable, undoable, or unthinkable. Science is a big success story, but where will it end? And indeed, will it end? Weaving together a tapestry of surprises, Barrow explores the frontiers of knowledge. We find that the notion of 'impossibilty' has played a striking role in our thinking. Surrealism, impossible figures, time travel, paradoxes of logic and perspective, theological speculations about Beings for whom nothing is impossible - all stimulate us to contemplate something more than what is. This is no ordinary look at the limits of science. Using simple explanations, it shows the reader that impossibility is a deep and powerful notion; that any Universe complex enough to contain conscious beings will contain limits on what those beings can know about their Universe; that what we cannot know defines reality as surely as what we can know.

Industry Reviews

"Barrow conducts a tour of many of the most interesting topics in recent popular science, giving most of them a new twist in the telling... Trying to improve our understanding of just what is possible, and what is not, seems a vital part of the enterprise our kind of consciousness has called science" * Financial Times * "[An] illuminating, well-written account... One can only wonder how Barrow can possibly make all these [concepts] fit together into a coherent story about the limits to science. Well, contrary to all expectations, he does make them fit, and in only 250 pages! So for about as good an account as youre going to get of where science stops, read this book" * Nature * "Delightful and fascinating... Impossibility is a thoughtful, careful, and insightful book that is presented in a skillfully woven narrative, guiding the reader gently through the thicket of logic, physics, and mathematics... If you are fascinated by the limits of knowledge, you will be richly rewarded by this book" * New Scientist *

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You Can Find This Book In

Fiction Non-Fiction Science Physics Science in General Philosophy of Science Astronomy, Space & Time Cosmology & The Universe Philosophy Epistemology & The Theory of Knowledge Impact of Science & Technology on Society Popular Science

The art of the impossible	p. 1
The power of negative thinking	p. 1
Of faces and games	p. 3
Those for whom all things are possible	p. 7
Paradox	p. 12
Visual paradox	p. 13
Linguistic paradox	p. 19
Limits to certainty	p. 21
A cosmic speed limit	p. 24
Summary	p. 26
The hope of progress	p. 27
Over the rainbow	p. 27
The voyage to Polynesia via Telegraph Avenue	p. 31
Progress and prejudice	p. 37
The big idea of unlimited knowledge	p. 41
Negativism	p. 45
Some nineteenth-century ideas of the impossible	p. 48
Summary	p. 55
Back to the future	p. 57
What do we mean by the limits of science?	p. 47
Possible futures	p. 58
Higgledy-piggledyology	p. 65
Selective and absolute limits	p. 68
Will we be builders or surgeons?	p. 70
The futures market	p. 72
How many discoveries are there still to be made?	p. 83
Summary	p. 84
Being human	p. 85
What are minds for?	p. 85
Counting on words	p. 91
Modern art and the death of a culture	p. 95
Complexity matching: climbing Mount Improbable	p. 96
Intractability	p. 100
The frontier spirit	p. 107
The end of diversity	p. 109
Does science always bring about its own demise?	p. 111
Death and the death of science	p. 113
The psychology of limits	p. 114
Summary	p. 116
Technological limits	p. 118
Is the Universe economically viable?	p. 118
Why we are where we are	p. 120
Some consequences of size	p. 122
The forces of Nature	p. 125
Manipulating the Universe	p. 128
Criticality: the riddle of the sands	p. 138
Demons: counting the cost	p. 142
Two types of future	p. 147
Is technological progress inevitable (or always desirable)?--a fable	p. 150
Summary	p. 153
Cosmological limits	p. 155
The last horizon	p. 155
Inflation--still crazy after all these years	p. 164
Chaotic inflation	p. 169
Is the Universe open or closed?	p. 170
Eternal inflation	p. 171
The natural selection of universes	p. 174
Topology	p. 176
Did the Universe have a beginning?	p. 178
Naked singularities: the final frontier	p. 182
Dimensions	p. 184
Symmetry-breaking	p. 185
Summary	p. 188
Deep limits	p. 190
Patterns in reality	p. 190
Paradoxes	p. 195
Consistency	p. 197
Time travel: is the Universe safe for historians?	p. 199
Completeness	p. 207
Impossible constructions	p. 211
Metaphorical impossibilities	p. 215
Summary	p. 216
Impossibility and us	p. 218
Godel's theorem and physics	p. 218
Does Godel stymie physics?	p. 221
Godel, logic, and the human mind	p. 230
The problem of free will	p. 232
The reaction game	p. 236
Mathematics that comes alive	p. 238
A stranger sort of impossibility	p. 239
The Arrow Impossibility Theorem	p. 242
Summary	p. 246
Impossibility: taking stock	p. 248
Telling what is from what isn't	p. 248
Notes	p. 253
Index	p. 275
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.

Impossibility

The Limits of Science and the Science of Limits

At a Glance

Paperback

Industry Reviews

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

You Can Find This Book In

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